(Re)Sounding Nations: Anthems and the Politics of Performing and Listening in Wartime Europe (1936-1945)

Abstract

The different sides at war have always used music to generate collective identifications, connect public and private spaces, and promote new ways of listening. This chapter shows that anthems were essential and ubiquitous weapons of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, as forgers of national belonging and solidarity, patriotism and mobilization, but also as means of acoustic surveillance and violence. The basic premise of these pages is that national and official songs acquire more significance when analyzed not only as poetry nor as the mere sum of words and music, but also as embodied and embedded sound. Thus, anthems challenge historiographical “visualism” by revealing that aurality has been a central issue of nationalist policies and the experience of war in Europe from 1936 to 1945.